


A Winter's Tale

by deathmallow



Category: Hunger Games Series - All Media Types, Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins
Genre: AU, F/M, Gen, Prompt Fic, rebellion fails AU, still of a winter's night they say
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-29
Updated: 2014-11-22
Packaged: 2018-02-15 06:59:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,856
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2219868
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deathmallow/pseuds/deathmallow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For Haymitch and Johanna, it turns out the rebellion's failure isn't the end of all things.</p><p>Edit: Added a Katniss and Peeta coda by request.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. A Winter's Tale

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Babydoll Ria (Babydoll_Ria)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Babydoll_Ria/gifts).



> For a prompt on Tumblr, Anonymous with "Johanna and Haymitch, kill your darlings" and Seevikifangirl/BabyDoll_Ria with "Hayhanna: ghost stories".
> 
> TW for non-explicit char death, war-related violence, and torture.
> 
> Chi-studios is making a lovely fanart piece for this story! The initial sketch is [here](http://chistudios.tumblr.com/post/96095020607/a-quick-sketch-basked-on-deathmallows-a-winters)

The rebellion died not in a single battle or an impressive explosion, but in a gradual trickle. It began when Katniss died in District Four. An assassin got a lucky shot and wasn’t stupid enough to shoot her in the body armor. The entire nation got treated to the sight of the Mockingjay with her head suddenly turned into a mist of red, pink, and grey.

District Thirteen didn’t suffer reversals with grace and clearly decided that somehow, the war couldn’t go on, so they went back into hiding to save their own skins. Suddenly, their allies were gone, and they were left exposed and defenseless.

They fought as long as they could. But cold logic was against them. The rebels were untrained, undersupplied, unable to move from place to place easily, and facing a superior force on every count. By winter, the slow bleed continued, as the former battles became more of a running fight for survival, a few desperate fugitives trying to hide because the war might be over, but surrender would bring them no mercy. None of them was the type to give in and be killed. That sort never made it out of the arena in the first place.

Finnick died on the steps of the Justice Building in Nine—Haymitch never found out how he’d been discovered. Peeta got cut down on the outskirts of District One, a bag of bread in his hand, and Annie swiftly followed barely three days later.

Even Johanna’s beloved woods, a forest that seemed to stretch on forever, couldn’t hide them forever against hovercraft and infrared goggles and a force with nothing but manpower and time. They spent New Year’s huddled together in a snow cave, neither of them making any wishes for the year ahead. No point. They lasted another three weeks, exhausted and half-starved. Spying the Peacekeeper, he jerked aside just enough that the bullet caught him in the shoulder, a bright explosion of pain. But that dimmed next to the sight of Johanna, body twisted awkwardly as she fell, her blood crimson against the clean white snow and steaming into the frigid winter air. He’d seen too many people die, so he wasted no time on useless prayers or babbling about how she’d be OK. He dropped to his knees beside her, ignoring the pain in his shoulder, ignoring the wetness of blood and snow seeping through his trousers, and clumsily took her hand in his. 

His left hand holding hers, as his right hung dead and useless. Her ragged gloves finally shredded two days ago, showing that the only ornament on that hand was the cold white of frostbite and black of necrosis on her fingertips—he’d never given her a ring. Never gave her any kind of life but that of being animals hunted on the run, but even those stolen moments were precious. The hot flame of loving her and not withstanding it alone was about the only thing that kept him alive some days. Though they probably should have just curled up in the snow together and drifted off to sleep. He couldn’t look at her brown eyes, couldn’t bear to see them wide-staring and blank, stripped of all the fierce life that had always been there.

He should have known it would be this way, desperately as he’d hoped that of the two of them, Johanna might outlive him. It was always his curse to be the one left alive in the end, left to swallow the bitter knowledge that his schemes had been what led those he cherished to their deaths. He’d been a bane.

Snow came to see him in the hospital in the Capitol where they held him, coolly looking at him like staring at an old toothless wolf behind bars. They had treated his shoulder, at least enough so that he wouldn’t bleed to death or die of infection. They amputated the three toes and the two fingers that had gone black with frostbite. They also very helpfully bound him to the bed with thick leather straps.

After Snow left, they took his tongue to boot. “Treason seems to be an ongoing issue with you, Mister Abernathy. That mind of yours will be dealt with soon enough, but you’ve caused more than enough trouble with your words, so let’s remove the temptation for what time you have left,” he said coolly as he turned to go, not bothering to stick around to watch. Snow wasn’t a sadist, to enjoy the sight of it. He simply wanted it done because it made things easier to keep him silent. The doctor who did it didn’t get much enjoyment either. Neither did Haymitch, for that matter. The pain and choking on his blood weren’t all that pleasant. The latter notion reminded him too much of Maysilee, and then suddenly she was there in the room, a presence forever sixteen who stepped in beside the doctor unnoticed and laid a cool hand on his arm and helped steady him. 

He’d forgotten what starvation felt like, but he’d been reminded in those months on the run. As well they didn’t give him anything to eat anyway—he probably would have choked on it, not sure of how to swallow now, even if his mouth could have handled it given the pain of the wound.

There was no point hiding it. This was the end, and he was the last ne left, so after they left him, he wept until he had no tears left. At least weeping didn’t require a tongue. Not ceasing from numbness, because the well of grief couldn’t end for all of them, from Chaff and Cecelia and Woof to Katniss and Peeta to Finnick and then finally, Johanna. He simply had nothing left to give to tears because of the dehydration. They must have noticed. He woke next to an IV bag in his arm, keeping him alive.

He took his final leave from the Capitol as a spectacle—the rebel, the traitor, put on display for all of them to see. The people of the Capitol thronged the square in front of the Presidential Mansion. At least with it being winter the smell of Snow’s rose gardens didn’t fill the air with thick perfume as it always did every summer during the Games.

They looked at him with rage and fear and hostility, the man who’d turned into something alien and loathsome to them, the man who they thought was their pet victor who adored them, the man who’d almost brought down their world. _Almost_. 

This was the first event of Snow’s little Victory Tour, a procession of triumph through the reconquered districts. Every district Snow made his speeches about treason and ingratitude, and every district, the crowd of captives shown off grew larger and larger, until it was a throng of several hundred by the time they reached the outer districts that had rebelled the quickest. 

It was a carnival of barbaric splendor, the prisoners paraded in high style from the train station to the steps of the Justice Building to face the assembled masses, shackled and silent. They always fed them a gritty drying agent on the train beforehand so that no blood from the healing wound, or drool in some cases, would run down their chins in the triumphal procession. 

Avoxes, bound and robbed of speech: Snow took no chances of any defiant last stand by anyone, leaving no words that would linger in memory. But the centerpiece of the show—appropriately left until last as always—was Haymitch Abernathy, the highest ranking traitor captured alive. He wished he hadn’t instinctively dodged that bullet in the woods. 

Their supposed crimes were read off and Snow preached forgiveness as well as justice, and now that the foolishness was over and the traitors were caught, he distributed bread to the starving crowds, throwing them a feast, inviting them to rejoin the community of Panem, painting himself as the stern yet merciful father. The people were smart enough to take the scraps they could get and went along with it. Resistance at this point was sheer stupidity.

They couldn’t have asked, but he sensed none of them needed the question answered. All of them knew where they were bound on this eastward train. They were headed towards District Twelve. Of course—the spiritual heart of the rebellion.

Nobody needed a tongue to sob. Their boxcar filled with the sound every night. He sat in his corner, with nothing left to give them. He sought no reassurance, not even the touch of a friendly hand on his shoulder. He didn’t much deserve it, and he sensed to try to give them the same might be rejected. He’d helped lead them into all this, and though they’d all been willing to die in pursuit of freedom, admittedly this was a shitty way to go. Tipping his head back, feeling the vibration of the train on the rails running through him, he closed his eyes. He was tired, body and soul. No more fight left to pursue, nothing except a calm acceptance of the inevitable. They’d failed this time. But even the Games couldn’t last forever. Someday, they’d all be free, but at least he didn’t have to live to see the wreckage in the meantime. So he didn’t weep. He’d kept company with the dead long enough. He’d see everyone who mattered to him soon enough. 

They didn’t make him watch it, and he couldn’t see as the window of the room in the Justice Building where he was held was at the back, but by the passage of the light, the executions took four days. He heard the words spoken on the steps below given that they were broadcast through a microphone to allow the entire central square to hear them clearly. Same script as he’d heard in the Capitol and through eleven other districts already. The only difference was that this time they didn’t get back on the train. Well, Thread had provided the gallows a year ago now. Tested them well in the months before the Quell also, so people in Twelve were no strangers to a hanging, though dozens in one day was entirely different.

He wondered if any of the exhausted miners collapsed from standing there in the cold for endless hours as the procession moved along. Sooner or later they’d get to him. He’d die in District Twelve, and die alone. Not much different from what he’d imagined his end would be two years ago, although he’d fancied his liver would finally shit itself out one day, or he’d fall down the stairs drunk, or something, and they wouldn’t discover him for days, weeks, months. The thought actually hadn’t bothered him much then, which probably said plenty about how deep-sunk in despair he’d been.

He’d failed, but at least he’d tried to do something worthwhile, and he’d died in pursuit of it. He only regretted that he hadn’t succeeded and the Games would continue, and that he’d survived this long as the last one alive. Chances were that they’d bury the executed rebels somewhere in a common grave—maybe out in the woods. Well, at least he’d be in good company there.

Fingers pressed against the window, scraping a path through the frost so that he could look out on the comfortingly familiar grey buildings of District Twelve, the coal-dusted snow, he breathed in roughly, wished it would simply be over already. The waiting was the worst part.

They came for him on the fifth morning. He didn’t protest as they redid his shackles with his arms bound behind him, even if it wrenched his stiff, bad right shoulder unbearably. It was finally over, the unbearable pressure finally released. The wind lashed his skin bitterly as he stepped outside without a coat, stinging harshly in the raw weals on his wrists from the constant chafe of metal shackles.

He ignored Snow’s speech. As he did every year at Reaping Day, unable to bear looking at the faces of kids who might soon be dead, his gaze lifted to a point beyond the crowd. He saw them there, waiting. All his dead stood there, watching him in turn. Katniss, Peeta, Chaff, Angus, Seeder, Cecelia, Mags, Finnick, Annie, Maysilee, his ma, his brother Ash, Briar, others—all of them were young, strong, and whole, and by the patient and steady way they returned his gaze, they were waiting for him. He almost choked then, feeling his knees want to buckle beneath him and send him down to those snow-dusted old wooden boards. But quite a paradox, because it wasn’t from a heavy weight put upon him—it was from the weight suddenly lifted from his shoulders, because it was over, it was finally over, and they were here.

Where was she, though? The anxiety rose within him. Had Johanna died blaming him? Then he felt the hand on his shoulder. He said her name softly before he could think better of it, trying to not wince at the ugly mangled sound he made of it, even in a whisper. He tried to remember instead saying it softly to her one night by fireglow, snuggled down deep in blankets in the crisp autumn air, stealing a few precious hours together. That was the first time he'd made love with her, though not the last. He preferred to not think about the last. The first time still wove threads of wonder and hope through things, even in their situation. The last time was pure desperately with the fear and the knowledge that tomorrow or in a year, it was all over. “You ready to get this shit over with when he finally shuts up?” she said in his ear. No warmth of breath accompanied as before, but then, she wasn’t alive. He nodded, not turning to look at her. It was enough that she was here.

It steadied him enough that when Snow ended the long-winded speech, Haymitch smiled cheerfully at him, making a deliberately sarcastic _let’s get on with it_ nod towards the gallows. He’d have gestured as well if his hands weren’t bound behind him. He managed to make it up the gallows steps without a stumble, despite the clumsy balance of shackled arms and missing toes.

Light and sight faded as they pulled the black silk bag over his head, though the rough fibers of the rope still prickled through the thin fabric as they settled it around his neck and pulled it taut.

Her fingers brushed his, though his were tightly balled into fists, braced instinctively. He nodded, understanding—unclenched his fingers, grateful for the pressure of her hand in his as she laced her fingers through his. She wouldn’t let go, even when he dropped. He’d bet on it. He’d held her hand as she died. It looked like she’d return the favor, and with that, the last trickle of fear left him, only a preternatural calm remaining. A few minutes left to struggle, and that was all. One last deep breath and he embraced the sound of the trap opening, letting go with surprising ease—freedom, finally.

~~~~~~~~~~

See, those twits in the freelands that still say ghosts aren’t real are just in denial. We here are more sensible folk. Whoever our local ghosts were, their lives played out centuries ago, the tale long lost. My Uncle Kip, our local historian, has spent the better part of twenty years trying to figure it out and he’s traced back three hundred years so far with no luck. But everyone knows that wandering the Frith Forest near here means you might meet the ghosts. People here in Frithtown agree on a few things about them.

First, there are two of them, and they probably died in winter since they’re seen the most around then. A woman, about my own age—late twenties, short, curvy, messy mop of brown hair with a mischievous grin and big brown eyes. There’s a man with her, a bit older, black-haired and grey-eyed, and he usually looks amused at something like the world itself is a massive jest. Both of them have odd accents. No telling how they died. Doesn’t show on them, nobody's rude enough to ask, and apparently they’re not like the ghosts down in Omandla that are extremely pissed off at being murdered and go in for the “gory dead” look and vengeance. Seen the holos—not a bunch I’d like to meet after dark.

Second, they’re a pair of lovers. You never see them without each other. Anyone out there, particularly with a sweetheart of their own, might see them out there, caught up in a world of their own, holding on to each other and kissing like they need it more than the air they don't breathe anymore, like they might never get the chance again. Of course, they seem to like their privacy on that. Once they’re aware they’re not alone, they’ll vanish right as you look at them. Swear to it, honest. Reeban and I saw ‘em when I was seventeen. There one minute, gone the next. Seeing a love like that, all bright and almost painful, kind of puts a damper on any fumbling teenage make-outs that same night.

Third, they’re helpful sorts. Now, if you’re just plain lost, they might well point you in the right direction and direct you, usually with a sarcastic eyeroll. The woman seems particularly entertained by the tourists who couldn’t find their way out of the woods to save their asses. Even though they’re dead, apparently they want you to know you’re a moron. The man seems particularly kind to kids. Maybe when he was alive he had some of his own. More than one tale about him sitting right beside some lost boy or girl all night to comfort them while they sleep, while the woman kept watch, and both of them suddenly vanishing when people are nearby. My brother Natton said it happened to him too, that the man said to go to sleep and he'd keep Natton safe, and I believe it. I was fourteen and he was six and we found him curled up underneath an old oak, sleeping without a care in the world. I swear I saw a flicker of something out of the corner of my eye nearby. Bet you they were there watching to make sure we found him OK.

Fourth, if you go into the woods with bad intentions, you’re a fucking idiot. That forest, vast as it is, won’t hide your sins. They’ve found some bodies over the years, led there by the would-be victims who’ve escaped when the ghosts attacked. Clean kills—single stab to the heart, or the skull cleaved in two. Primitive, but effective, and no knife or ax to be found, of course. Nice thing for a girl to know she can probably walk safe through the woods.

Now, the most popular notion is that they were a pair of lovers who killed themselves out there rather than be torn apart. Other people say her father or brother killed him in a rage, or that he actually killed her in a jealous rage but she forgives him, or that they both died in some battle in one of the wars long, long ago with the Panem Empire. You still find bullets and the like sometimes, if you wander away from the memorials. 

Maybe Uncle Kip will figure it out some day. He’s gotten into records, local and otherwise, back beyond the Third Panemic War against the Empire, the one that finally did the job. The Freeland of Rekton may refer to the “Fourth Panemic War” but any idiot knows that’s just because they’re where the Empire used to be and they want the pride of claiming the last diehards of that horror rebelling actually qualifies as a war. Maybe he’ll find the answer in the days of the Second War, maybe not. Maybe they lived and died such mundane lives that even local records won’t say. Maybe some mystery makes them all the more interesting and finding out that he was a programmer named Tithrit or a librarian named Bobben who loved cats back before the plague killed them all takes all the fun out of it. 

Whoever they were in life, they’re ours now, and far as Frithtown’s concerned, they’re welcome to stay as long as they like.


	2. All Hallow's Eve

The winds of winter howled especially bitter that year. Fugitives out in the open, perpetually drained by the cold and the inability to find food—Peeta had slipped away at dawn to the village in southeastern One to try to scrounge something up. He’d left them sleeping there—Haymitch and Johanna curled up together, Annie huddled tightly in her blankets. 

He doubted anyone would readily recognize him now, looking for the boy he’d been, instead of the figure worn by ordeal, bowed by loss. Nothing had been the same since Katniss died. Everything since then was simply following along day by day, doing his part for their band, but taking no joy in it. Not like Haymitch, who still had the fierce will to see them live. What did it matter anyway? Living the next forty years in a cave somewhere, without her, didn’t seem much like living at all—but he wasn’t ready to give up, not just yet.

He waited in the thin dawn light, watching through the plate glass window until the baker went out front to the shop and slipped into the back, stuffing a bag full of as much bread as he could carry, the loaves so warm against his frost-nipped fingers in their ragged gloves that they almost burned. In a twinkling, he was gone again.

They didn’t shout his name. All he heard was “Thief” and then the crack like thunder, and the feeling as though he’d been punched beneath his ribs, the force of it knocking him flat in the snow.

The cold crept in quickly after that. The last he saw, raising his head and feeling like it took all the effort in the world, was her, and so he smiled.

~~~~~~~~~~

Many out there in this world may lay claim to the title of spiritmancer in these days, ghosts walking the land as they do, but most of them are just telling you lurid tales about bloodcurdling shrieks and rattling chains to frighten you. Cheap tricks; you listen to them and you’ll think every damn haystack and boulder from here in Raestin down all the way to Alimez’s deserts has a ghost, let alone the buildings.

Now me, I come from a family tradition, five generations. The touch for it runs stronger in some. The Boy With the Bread has been here so long as a Jhan’s been hanging the sign of a spiritmancer, and longer yet. 

He must have died in the Second Panemic War. Folk that have talked to him figured that much out from some of his words. But like most ghosts, he doesn’t much remember his life. That’s a ghost for you, a handful of broken shards of what was the living spirit, the soul if you will. Think of it as something flung off a mountain. Some of the pieces are far-flung and end up lost, and some might be broken too small to repair. In any case, something is always lost. The impulse and deep drives remain as an echo—love, vengeance, attachment to a place. But they tend to lose the personal details, especially after whatever folk they had left behind them pass over as well.

So clearly he doesn’t remember that, and that probably holds him back in terms of his power and his purpose. “Awakened” ghosts, the more whole ones who have that piece of themselves back, tend to be the most powerful ones. In some places they’re even worshipped as local gods of a sort, with little prayers and offerings and the like. I hear they’ve got two of them up far to the north in the pinewoods that the locals adore, the so-called Frith Forest Guardians. And there’s the stories from the mid-country of a roaming ghost, a red-haired man, but maybe that’s several local ghosts being mistaken for one? Hey, it happens.

Now, the Boy carries a bag of bread with him, and sometimes starving families might wake to find a fresh, steaming-warm loaf of bread on their table. And sometimes, a father or mother whose kid has been “clumsy” and tends to go to school with bruises might end up with some bruises of their own.

The former tends to happen towards fall. The latter? That’s spring. He looks different between the two. The autumn ghost is a normal-looking kid, blond and fair, with a kindly smile.

The spring one? Well, let’s put it this way. He doesn’t carry bread, that one. I ran across him once when I was thirteen, and didn’t listen to my dad’s admonishment to get back before dark. That ghost was rage, pure and simple. Burning with it so much that it felt like the aura was fit to choke me, rage that might explode at the slightest touch. He looked at me, looked into me, and that was enough. He let me go that night. Probably because the worst intention I had was deceiving my mom and dad and staying out too late with my girl-friends. 

Others who’ve had darker things in their minds and hearts haven’t been so lucky. Wasn’t until I got a bit older and more trained in our ways that I figured it out—it was March when I saw him then. All Hallows, that’s in October. The day the veil between the worlds is thinnest, the day spirits are at their height of power. But for every shining moment, there’s an equal low. Every spirit is changeable through the year—spirit attacks are always higher in the spring, and that’s a fact. Though the most powerful attacks come from in autumn the ghosts that are dark through and through, and those tend to leave no witnesses. None except for the corpses, anyway.

But for some ghosts, particularly among the “unawakened”, the darker polarity tends to be sharper, almost like a totally different entity, probably due to some kind of conflict in life or the circumstances of how they died. That side tends to come out at the opposite of All Hallows when the spirit world is at its nadir. Small reason we kids always got warned to behave around the end of April, and it wasn’t from hoping a rabbit would bring us some candy.

Now, it seems there’s actually another side to the Boy. I didn’t learn this one until a few weeks ago. I went east to Kolshirr to visit my aunt for a time, my parents breaking up as they were. I learned about their ghosts, the different feel of the spirit-power of that place. Older mountains than back home, some older spirits too. Seems like every valley and hollow holds its spirits here. Funny thing the villagers told me—they had a pair of ghosts who showed up only on All Hallows—a girl with a bow, and a boy with a loaf of bread in hand. Nobody seemed to know where they were the rest of the year.

So there I was, waiting on All Hallows, and at moonrise, I saw the girl first, the huntress. Slim, short, dark-haired, darker-skinned than most folks back home. Those eyes flashed as she looked at me, and she drew her bow, grabbed an arrow lightning-quick from the quiver on her back. “Were you one of the ones who took him?” she demanded, staring at me. 

“No.” She looked at me—looked into me too, with that aggressive way spirits have, that searing soul-gazing. Much like the Boy had years ago, at that. She must have been satisfied with what she saw, because she lowered the bow and stalked off, her walk light and graceful.

I kept my distance as I followed so she wouldn’t see me. She ended up at the bakery, of course. I should have figured that from the start. The Boy was there, a loaf of bread in his hand, looking at her eagerly. He looked younger, brighter, than I’d ever seen him back home. But he didn’t run to the Huntress. He only held the bread out, and waited, like he was the hunter looking to reassure a skittish deer. 

It seemed like it took hours, and maybe it did. But she stepped forward, bit by bit, finally reached out and took the loaf of bread from his hand, and cautiously slipped her other hand into his. They stood there, reunited in those few moments, and then they vanished right as I looked at them.

So it looks like I’ll have something to tell the Boy next time I see him back home in Raestin, and I’ll have a trail of my own to follow to find his Huntress.


End file.
